


Run Away With Me

by TomyrisDarkwarden



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: All tigers go to heaven, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Death God McCree, Discussions of animal death/violence, First Chapter all Gencio, Gods AU, Happy Ending, High Fantasy, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by Hades and Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Is a bigger part of the story though, M/M, McHanzo comes later, Sojiro Shimada's A+ Parenting, Temporary Character Death, Twitter Challenge, nothing graphic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:53:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25277245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TomyrisDarkwarden/pseuds/TomyrisDarkwarden
Summary: It is a land of ancient legend. Where gods and other immortals play their games on a scale both Epic and personal.A star crossed love leads two couples into a struggle that will shake the foundations of the Divine World.A Prince and a Nymph. A Lark and a Frog revel in a love with consequences.A Prince and a God. Kindred souls that stand for what they believe in.
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Hanzo Shimada, Lúcio Correia dos Santos/Genji Shimada
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30





	Run Away With Me

The wind whistled through the Wise Wood and skipped across the pond where a young man sat on a log at the water's edge and hummed a few notes, jotting down words in the sand.

A pair of frogs hopped up next to him and observed his work. It had been a while since he had composed anything new for them and they were curious.  
He laughed in delight as they peered over his lyrics. The words were much sillier than the frogs were used to, but they seemed to resign themselves to the lines quickly enough.  
The young man's chuckle was mellow and silken. His skin a perfectly sun kissed dusky bronze speckled with gold and a dark green high on his cheekbones that hinted at his immortal nature. A simple nature spirit, albeit a slightly more powerful one.   
He was a nymph.  
The nymph, Lucio, lifted the frogs and gave each one a kiss for humoring his childish lyrics with equanimity before setting them down gently and wiping his hands off on the back of his embroidered tunic.

He hummed the tune again for them.

_”One green and lonely frog  
sat on a speckled log  
Singing the most accordant songs.  
la la  
Suddenly from the sky   
a lark was passing by  
and heard a sweet and lonely voice.  
La la._

_Dear green and lonely frog  
there on your speckled log  
singing a sweet and lonely song.  
there there  
Come up and fly with me  
where we can both be free  
then there'll be no more lonely songs.  
there there.” _

The frogs ribbit-ed their approval and began to study the lyrics in earnest.  
Which Lucio found somewhat embarrassing. He hadn't actually finished the words, though he was mostly done. He probably had one or two verses to go.

Now what rhymed with “thought”? Actually that part didn't need to rhyme if he just...

He murmured ideas, writing some in the loose sand of the pond shore and erasing others.

_"The lark he cocked his head  
Looked at the frog and said  
'I have the most delicious thought.'  
yes yes  
'you sing the melody  
I'll sing the harmony  
then there'll be no more lonely songs.” _

“Yes yes!”

The frogs leaped back into the safety of the pond and Lucio stood, ready for a fight.

The man was beautiful. Hair the color of bright moss and dark eyes.  
He lay on his stomach along a low hanging branch watching Lucio intently.

Lucio had lived in this pond for as long as he could remember and he had never seen a man like that before. He wondered briefly if they could be a disciple of Hanzo, the Prince of the Wise Wood but Hanzo was very reserved, much like the ancient woods and not given to the kind of frivolity that lead one to sneak up on unsuspecting nymphs.

“So what happens next?” he asked.  
“Between the Lark and the Frog?”

Lucio stared at him, dumbfounded.

“They become friends? … I guess?”  
The man giggled.

“I like that. That sounds nice.”  
His laugh sounded like chimes in a soft spring breeze.

Lucio ran a hand through his hair.

“Who are you? Does the Prince know you're in his Woods?”

The man laughed again.

“Are you scared of the Prince of the Wise Woods?” he asked.

Lucio thought it over carefully.  
“Prince Hanzo has never given me reason to fear. Respect? Yes. Fear?”  
He shrugged.  
The man seemed satisfied enough with that answer.

It was true. Prince Hanzo was quiet and poised. The howling of his wolves sent shivers down the spines of mortals, but he had never bothered Lucio.  
In fact, Lucio wasn't sure that Hanzo knew he existed. The pond was in a clearing and wasn't technically part of the Wise Woods. If you didn't bother Hanzo, he was unlikely to bother you.

His father though...

The Grain Lord, Sojiro, was known to be vindictive and fierce.

The slightest perceived insult and crops would fail for years in a row. Thousands of mortals starved at his pleasure.

“So they sing together and suddenly they're friends?” the man asked, completely bypassing Lucio's question.

Well he could work with that for now. If he didn't hear Hanzo's wolves baying for blood it was probably okay.

Lucio sighed in resignation.  
“Look I know it sounds childish. That was kind of the point of this particular one.”  
“Oh I understand and believe it or not I rather like that. So many nymphs and wannabe gods are so monstrously serious. It's dull and drab and boring. I like _your_ music. Even when you're being serious it's natural and pretty. It's nice.”

Lucio blushed a dark burnished gold.

He had never had anyone tell him that before.  
Though in fairness he had never had an immortal speak to him about it before.

Occasionally mortals who were forced to travel through the Wise Wood would stop and pay respects at his pond, but to them his music sounded like nothing more than crickets chirping and frogs croaking.  
Hanzo had probably heard his music before, but even if he had cared to, the two of them didn't really “converse”.

The man cracked a huge smile.

As if reading Lucio's thoughts he said “Well you're easy to please. I like that too.”

Lucio didn't think he _could_ blush any harder.  
He grinned.

“I like the sound of that.”

The stranger blushed the soft color of red gold.

Lucio burst out laughing.  
“So you've heard some of my other compositions? Which one is your favorite?”  
The man chuckled again.

They spent the rest of the afternoon talking about music and whatever else came to mind.   
The stranger was full of stories and the latest immortal gossip. With each anecdote the stranger seemed as though he was about to drop some sort of hint about who he was and then would surprise Lucio with some odd twist.

Eventually the Day Lord simply refused to extend their day any further and the Night Lord was threatening to make his presence known.

A wolf howled somewhere deep inside the Wood.  
The stranger's head jerked up at the sound. Startled, but not afraid.  
He sighed.

“I really should get moving. I have a long night ahead of me and you have a show to put on.”

Lucio smiled. Sure enough the fireflies were beginning to gather at the edges of the pond and the crickets were beginning to tune up.

“Till next time?” he said.

The stranger gave him an odd look but then smiled and visibly relaxed.

“Next time.” he promised.

888 888 888

Next time thankfully wasn't far off and before long the man was a regular visitor to the pond.  
Their talks were often silly, sometimes poignant, always fun.

Mostly they spoke of music. Lucio would hum a few bars of whatever he was working on and the stranger was unabashed about giving his thoughts, even when he thought a piece could maybe use some work.

Lucio hadn't yet gotten a name out of him, though he had his suspicions. He had made a sort of game out of trying to get the man to reveal it, but never really tried in earnest. If he didn't want to say who he was, that was none of Lucio's business.  
They were still friends. 

They were immortal, even if they weren't gods. Lucio would find out eventually. There was no need to rush.

888 888 888

A wet, dewy morning found Lucio running his fingers along the stem of a blue iris that had decided to bloom in little bunches at the pond edge. Sweet Flag was growing in abundance too, which the frogs were excited about.

He breathed in deeply the perfume of the iris. It made notes dance in his head and he wanted to hear them aloud.

He hummed a small idea. This piece wouldn't need words.

He and the stranger didn't need words. As often as they laughed and joked and shared ridiculous bits of gossip and poetry, they just as often would sit in silence as Lucio fiddled with lyrics in his sand writings and the stranger wove crowns of Woodland flowers.

When he played the idea for the stranger. The man hummed in satisfaction and smiled brightly.

Lucio's heartbeat dropped before practically exploding out of his chest.  
If he blushed any more, mortals would mistake him for a bronze statue.

Lucio began to work on the piece in earnest. It consumed the hours when the stranger wasn't with him.  
The melody haunted his sleep and filled him both with peace and a fierce longing.

The second time he played it for the stranger, the man had a much different reaction.

He stood at edge of the Woods, one foot in the sun and the other in the shade of the trees.

“For me,” he whispered softly.  
“You wrote this for me.”

It wasn't a question.

“I can't.... Lucio. Do you know who I am?”

Lucio breathed around the dread that was beginning to fill his chest.

“Is it a problem? We're friends, right? It doesn't matter what your name is. If it's just that you don't feel the same I can-”

“No.” The man cut him off, which was just as well since Lucio wasn't sure how he was going to finish that thought anyway. If he didn't feel the same, Lucio didn't know what he was going to do.

The man took three steps into the clearing and looked Lucio in the face. His eyes were filled with sadness and fear and something else that was very like what was probably on Lucio's face as well.

Without a word he reached down and touched a single finger to the surface of the pond.

It erupted into a field of wild waterlilies. Sweet Flag and Creeping Jenny burst through the crevice of every rock formation and flowers of every hue sprung up where the shore had previously given way to grass.

Lucio couldn't think; couldn't move.

He had feared this.

Genji.

The man's name was Genji.

Prince of Wildflowers and second son of The Grain Lord.

888 888 888

The waterlilies lived for four days and for the two weeks following their deaths, Lucio didn't play a single note.

Still, the melody didn't leave him.

The daylight hours were silent.  
There was no sound of birdsong, or frogs, or crickets, or wind around the pond.

When he finally drew the breath to release the melody back into the world, though, it sounded different; full of melancholy and heartbreak.  
A single strand of mournful notes strung together with nothing more than the need to summon a ghost.

He sang it every night for months.  
Some nights it was tragic, some nights nostalgic, some nights sweet, some nights bitter. But it was always _his._

The Day and Night Lords passed over as though nothing was wrong. The Dream Lord offered neither advice nor comfort.

Most of a year had passed before Genji stood at the edge of Lucio's pond again.

“Please stop,” he said.

Lucio closed his eyes.

“That bad, huh?”

Genji let out a watery chuckle. It sounded like it was trying not to be a sob.

“Being with you was so much fun. I'm so sorry it has to be this way. I just.... My father...”

“Your father doesn't scare me,” Lucio lied.

“Being here. Alone. Without you. Forever. That scares me.”

Genji sighed.

“Lu, you have to let me go.”

“I'm not the one who has you trapped.”

Genji scrubbed his hands down his face.

“Lucio look! They won't let us. My father won't let us and he won't let Hanzo let us. Look! See how the edge of the Woods is already on your doorstep? You are in actual danger!”

He had heard the wolves howling in the night. They sang almost as though they too were in mourning. Prey they didn't want to kill.

Lucio took a look around his pond for the first time in weeks.

Genji was right. The Wise Wood had moved closer. Branches from trees that looked hundreds of years older then they really were stooped to touch their branches to the water.

Or maybe they were that old and had simply moved while he wasn't looking.

“Please,” Genji said. “You need to stop. Before they actually come after you.”  
Lucio waved him off.  
“I get it. I understand I really do, but please don't ask me not to play for you. If this is the only way I can ever be with you, please. This song is all I have, all I can give you. Please let me.”

Genji pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes.  
Eyes cast to the ground he slowly approached Lucio and placed his hands upon his chest.  
The water that Genji shoved him into was cold, but not as frosty as the look in Genji's eyes.

“You stupid man! Fool!” he spat.  
“So you think that could be enough? I am the Prince of Wildflowers! Mortals tell epic tales of my beauty! Do you think...” the facade started to crumble.  
Lucio smiled up at him and stood up on the water holding out his hand.

“Let me show you what I think.”

Tears were streaming down Genji's dumbfounded face. This was not the reaction he had been expecting, looking for, or dreading.

With seemingly no other option but to run, he took Lucio's hand.

Lucio pulled him close and out onto the surface of the pond.  
The wind caused the leaves of the low hanging trees to rustle and chime. The lapping of the water on the shore kept time. Night birds added their delicate notes to a chorus of crickets and the low singing of the frogs.   
The song, all of it, in all of its heartbreaking, sweetness, hope, and affection, crashed through Genji and filled him with a feeling too large for even his immortal frame.

It circled in his chest and around his head, resonating in his throat until it forced its way out of him in a racked sob.

He buried his face in Lucio's chest as they glided across the water.

Finally the notes began to fade with the stars and the sky took on its pre-dawn indigo.  
Genji leaned into Lucio's warmth for as long as the last tone resonated. They slowed their dance and Lucio lead him back up onto the shore and cyclamen flowers blossomed where they walked.

As the sky moved from purple to pink Genji leaned up and kissed him tenderly.  
“I have to go.”

888 888 888

_“Dear green and lonely frog  
There on your speckled log  
singing a sweet and lonely song  
there there  
come up and fly with me  
where we will both be free   
then there'll be no more lonely songs  
there there” _

Days later, Lucio was singing by himself on the banks of the pond.

_“Dear lark up in the tree  
perchance you cannot see  
I have no wings with which to fly  
sigh sigh  
but if you stay a while  
I'll sing and make you smile  
and you will be good company  
sigh sigh.” _

“Are wings really all you lack?” The voice behind him was harsh and made Lucio jump.

He turned. The man that stood there was... not particularly tall, but made up for it with the thick chords of muscle that wrapped around every part of his body.

Now that Lucio had the mind to look for it, the features so similar to Genji's stood out.

“What business does the Prince of the Wise Woods have with a lowly pond nymph?”

Hanzo snorted, but he smirked as well.   
“What business does a lowly pond nymph have with the Prince of Wildflowers is probably the more pertinent question.”

Lucio looked away, attempting to appear respectful, but not meek. He would be extremely lucky, indeed, if he came off as anything other than defiant.

“Come”  
Hanzo turned and walked away with the clear intention that Lucio follow him. Lucio hesitated for the briefest second before moving.  
Hanzo led Lucio down a forest path that he could have sworn was never there before.  
They walked for hours in silence along the track lined on either side with trees that made little secret of the dangers that lay beyond them in the depths of Hanzo's Domain. 

Eventually they came to a large and gently rolling river. 

The sense of it filled Lucio. This river was connected to everything. Deep and treacherous seas, sweetly babbling tributaries, irrigation canals, rapids and waterfalls. Where water flowed so did life and the music that went hand in hand with it.

He could hear that music, from the joyful ditty’s of dolphins, to the mourning dirges of whales; the hunting hymns of sharks, the working songs farmers flooding their fields.

He turned to Hanzo.  
“What is this place?”

Hanzo smirked again.  
“Your wings.”

Alarm bells immediately went off in Lucio's head.  
“Let me guess. I give up Genji and you give me this for a Domain.”

Hanzo tilted his head.  
“You would prefer the alternative?”

Lucio huffed as respectfully as he could.  
“Even if I _would_ give up my love for Genji in exchange for a nicer lake, Genji was never mine to give up.”

Hanzo stared at him wide eyed.

“I've accepted that Genji and I can't be together. I'm not singing in any effort to get him to change his mind or to get you and your father to grant _permission,_ whatever that means. I'm a nymph who makes music. I sing, it's what I am and I could no more stop singing than you could stop hunting.”

Silence hung between the two of them for a moment. Lucio knew he had just taken his life into his own hands. He bowed deeply and genuinely respectful.

“I understand what you meant by this and I thank you for the offer, but I cannot accept.”

He backed away, still posturing before turning when propriety allowed. He walked quickly back down to his own pond, second guessing every snapping twig as the sound of Hanzo's wolves coming to   
eat him for his insolence. He didn't stop until he was safely back in the waters of his own Domain.

If he had thought the Wise Woods were invading his territory before, Hanzo had taken the tactic to a new extreme. Foxes and snakes were beginning to hunt his frogs in almost unnatural numbers and scum had begun to form on the rocks of the pond shore.

Soon there was no more room to so much as sit on the banks.

Another two days past before Genji showed himself on the shore, near in tears.

“Lucio, please. You have to stop. This is killing you. Sing a different song! Any song! The Frog and the Lark! You know how much I love that song!”

Lucio smiled. His face had grown pale and gaunt. The once vibrant deep greens that had adorned his cheekbones had soured into a sickly tar color. It wouldn't be long now.

“Genji,” he said smiling softly. “You know that's something I can't just do. I can't stop singing, Genji, it's as much a part of my nature as planting flowers is of yours. Can you imagine never planting flowers again? Or having someone else dictate what you could and couldn't plant; where you could plant? Genji, this is the only song that means anything anymore.”

Genji sobbed. Lucio was right and it was killing him.  
He held Lucio for as long as he could before Lucio shooed him off with warnings about his father's reaction.

Every day Lucio's voice became weaker and weaker.  
He saw Hanzo once at the banks but couldn't move enough to approach. Hanzo looked distraught. He looked tired, and lonely, and sad. Like what was happening to Lucio was somehow breaking his heart.  
Finally he turned away and went back into the Wood.

The music stopped and the pond was still.

Lucio's voice had finally failed him.

He strayed out of his head until a new voice broke the silence.

“Well ain't you a sorry sight.”

The Dead Lord had finally come for him.

**Author's Note:**

> Well this was chapter 1. I have Chapter 2 blocked and Chapter 3 sorted, but neither are written so expect a slight wait. Sorry. I've had this in my head for about a year.   
> For those of you who may be curious about the Lore it's antiquity flavored, but not a parallel.   
> Next chapter will go into more detail about who is what so stay tuned.


End file.
